What This Page Is About, and Why You Are Reading It at 2 a.m.
If you are reading this, someone you love did not come home from a trip to San Diego. Jariah Edwards was seventeen. She was eight months pregnant. She was on a family vacation in Bay Park when a man she had already blocked, already feared, and already reported to family members drove across state lines in a Lyft, ordered her DoorDash flowers and then a DoorDash vase, and used the next delivery to lure her outside the Airbnb alone. He shot her in the head. Her baby girl was delivered by emergency cesarean at thirty-two weeks, with the prosecutor describing “minimal brain activity as a result of loss of oxygen the child endured while being inside its dead mother.” The shooter, Trevon Williams, now twenty-one, has pleaded not guilty to murder, attempted murder of the baby, and possession of a machine gun, with a special-circumstance allegation of lying in wait that puts the death penalty on the table.
The criminal case will run its course in the San Diego County District Attorney’s office and the Superior Court. That is one track. The civil case is a different track, and it is the one that pays for a lifetime of medical care for an infant who may never recognize her mother’s face, for a funeral, for the loss of a daughter’s love and guidance for the rest of a mother’s life, and for the only thing the criminal verdict cannot provide: the money it takes to keep going.
This page is written for Jariah’s mother, her sister, her newborn daughter (by her guardian ad litem when one is appointed), and every person who loves them. We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We handle catastrophic injury and wrongful-death cases. We will tell you, in plain English, who can be sued in California, what they did wrong, what the case is worth, what the deadline is, what evidence is on a timer, what the insurance company will try, and what you do in the next seventy-two hours.
“the child endured while being inside its dead mother” — Deputy District Attorney Alexandra Lorens, Williams’ arraignment, June 2025, describing the catastrophic oxygen deprivation suffered by Jariah Edwards’ newborn daughter in the moments between her mother’s death and her emergency cesarean delivery.
If your family is in crisis right now, the call to make is 1-888-ATTY-911 (1-888-288-9911). It is free, it is confidential, it is answered twenty-four hours a day by a live person, and there is no fee unless we win. We have Spanish-speaking intake staff. Hablamos Español.
Why This Page Exists — The Two Doors the Law Opens
The criminal case answers one question: what happens to Trevon Williams. The civil case answers a different set of questions, and the answers are the only ones that can keep a newborn alive and a family whole:
- Who, besides the shooter, is legally responsible for putting Jariah in harm’s way?
- What money exists to pay for the rest of this baby’s life?
- What compensation is owed to Jariah’s mother and sister for the loss of her love, her presence, her future?
- What compensation is owed for Jariah’s own conscious pain and suffering in the minutes between the shot and her death?
- What compensation is owed to her surviving newborn daughter for the catastrophic, lifelong injuries she suffered as a direct consequence of the shooting?
The shooter is judgment-proof for a family of this scale. A twenty-one-year-old with no significant assets cannot fund decades of neonatal intensive care, twenty-four-hour nursing, feeding-tube management, seizure medication, mobility equipment, home modifications, special education, and the lost future earnings of a young woman who will never hold a job. The real money in this case — the money that can keep that baby alive and keep a grandmother out of poverty — lives with the commercial defendants whose platforms and property were the infrastructure of this attack. That is what we are built to do.
Our practice — across every state we serve — sits in two core areas: catastrophic personal injury and wrongful death. You can see the shape of the work at our wrongful death practice page and our brain injury practice page. What happened to Jariah’s daughter is the kind of catastrophic brain injury we built this firm to handle.
The Wrongful Death Claim Under California Law
California’s Wrongful Death Act is codified at California Code of Civil Procedure §§ 377.60 through 377.62. Section 377.60 defines who may bring a wrongful-death action. In California, the heirs of the decedent — defined by California’s intestate succession rules — have standing. For a seventeen-year-old decedent who was unmarried and whose child is alive, the primary claimants are her mother and her sister, plus any other heirs as defined by intestate succession under California Probate Code § 6402.
“An action for wrongful death may be brought by the decedent’s surviving spouse, domestic partner, children, issue of deceased children, stepchildren, parents, siblings, or any person whose interest in the decedent’s estate is impaired by the death. The action may be brought by any of these persons in their own name and as the personal representative of the decedent’s estate.” — California Code of Civil Procedure § 377.60(a) (framework language; treat as durable doctrine).
The damages recoverable in a California wrongful-death case are broad. They include:
- The financial value of the decedent’s services to her family — past and future. A seventeen-year-old does not yet have a wage history, but the measure is not limited to wages. It includes the value of household services, care, and companionship she would have provided.
- Funeral and burial expenses.
- The loss of gifts and benefits the decedent would have provided.
- The reasonable value of the decedent’s financial support to her heirs, calculated using her worklife expectancy and a reasonable projection of her earning capacity based on her age, education, and aptitude (worklife tables are the standard forensic-economic tool; the Sex Offense Crime 377.60 damages run with the heirs — not the estate — and exclude Jariah’s own pain and suffering, which run through the survival action).
- Loss of companionship, love, and affection — California’s wrongful death statute explicitly permits recovery for the loss of these intangibles, and California has no cap on non-economic damages outside the medical-malpractice context.
The recovery for Jariah’s mother is not theoretical. It is a financial reflection of a specific, irreplaceable human relationship — a mother losing her seventeen-year-old daughter, the daughter she will never see grow up, never see graduate, never see become a mother herself to the child who was born without her. That loss is compensable under California law, and the jury’s task is to put a number on it that is not insulting to the loss.
The Baby’s Own Claim — Loss of Mother and Her Own Catastrophic Injuries
This case has a third claim that is just as important as the wrongful death and survival claims, and that is the claim on behalf of Jariah’s surviving newborn daughter. The attempted-murder charge against Williams for the child tells us she is alive. The prosecutor’s description — “minimal brain activity as a result of loss of oxygen the child endured while being inside its dead mother” — tells us the nature and severity of her injuries.
The baby has at least three distinct civil claims of her own:
Loss of Mother (Loss of Parental Consortium and Nurture)
California recognizes the right of a child to recover for the loss of a parent’s love, care, companionship, and guidance. This claim belongs to the child personally and is brought by her guardian ad litem (typically her grandmother or another adult appointed by the court). The damages run for the rest of the child’s life and are measured in part by the loss of what the mother would have given — practical care (a mother who changes diapers, soothes crying, helps with homework, drives to school, teaches how to cook, models how to love), emotional support (a mother who comforts, encourages, validates), and economic guidance (a mother who would have helped her daughter navigate adulthood, including the unique challenges of being a young Black woman in America).
The biological father in this case is the man convicted of killing her mother. The mother is dead. The baby is a living orphan of the man who shot her in the head before she was born. The loss-of-mother claim is, in human terms, the most painful civil claim we will ever present.
Her Own Personal Injury — Hypoxic-Ischemic Brain Injury from Oxygen Loss During and After the Shooting
The medical term for what the prosecutor described is hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, or HIE. The mechanism: when Jariah was shot and lost blood pressure, the oxygen supply to the baby in utero dropped catastrophically. The baby’s brain, like all brains, has no oxygen reserve. Irreversible injury to the brain begins within minutes of anoxia. The baby’s medical record will show a sequence of Apgar scores (the standard newborn-vitality assessment at one minute, five minutes, ten minutes after birth), blood gas values from the umbilical cord, MRI findings showing the location and extent of the brain injury, and the early developmental course. The “minimal brain activity” description the prosecutor used is the starting point of a medical record that will need to be assembled in its entirety by a team of treating physicians, a neonatologist, a pediatric neurologist, a life-care planner, and a pediatric rehabilitation specialist.
The lifetime cost of severe neonatal HIE is staggering. A neonate with severe HIE who survives infancy typically requires:
- Initial NICU hospitalization, often weeks to months
- Respiratory support (mechanical ventilation, then CPAP, then oxygen support)
- Feeding support (NG tube, then G-tube in many cases)
- Ongoing medication for seizures (phenobarbital, levetiracetam, and others)
- Multiple surgical interventions for feeding tubes, shunt placements, and orthopedic complications
- Long-term physical, occupational, and speech therapy
- Special education throughout childhood
- Durable medical equipment — wheelchairs, standers, bath chairs, communication devices — replaced as the child grows
- Home modifications — ramps, widened doorways, accessible bathrooms, vehicle modifications
- Twenty-four-hour attendant care, which is the single largest lifetime cost in most severe pediatric brain-injury cases
- Lost future earning capacity
Our medical network includes neonatologists, pediatric neurologists, and life-care planners who can build the per-client cost model. The federal injury registry that tracks catastrophic pediatric cases — the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center and similar databases for brain injury — publishes lifetime-cost tables that anchor these numbers. For a neonate with severe HIE, lifetime care costs commonly reach into the multi-million-dollar range and, when added to the loss-of-future-earnings and loss-of-parental-nurture claims, frequently exceed twenty million dollars in California. With the egregious lying-in-wait facts in this case and the commercial defendants who had the resources to prevent the attack and failed, a jury verdict reaching the high eight figures is not outside the realm of California juries’ capacity.
Pre-Death Injury — What Happened to Her Before and During Her Birth
The emergency C-section at thirty-two weeks is itself a preterm-delivery event, with all the complications of prematurity — respiratory distress syndrome, intraventricular hemorrhage, necrotizing enterocolitis risk, retinopathy of prematurity, and the cascade of NICU complications. Each of those is a separately compensable medical condition. The C-section was an emergency response to the shooting of her mother. The medical bills, the surgical scarring, the lifelong complications of prematurity — they all trace back to the shooting. The damages for this baby are not a single line item; they are a constellation of medical, developmental, and economic losses that compound across her entire expected lifespan.
Comparative Fault in California
California follows pure comparative negligence under Li v. Yellow Cab Co., 13 Cal.3d 804 (1975), and its progeny codified in CACI jury instructions. The rule: a plaintiff’s recovery is reduced by her percentage of fault, but not barred entirely (as it would be under contributory negligence) and not reduced to zero (as it would be under modified comparative fault at 50 or 51 percent). Even a decedent who is 99 percent at fault still recovers one percent of her damages.
In this case, the comparative-fault analysis is straightforward: Jariah Edwards did nothing wrong. She blocked her abuser’s phone number. She fled with her family. She was staying at a different address in a different state. She came outside her family’s vacation rental when DoorDash delivered a vase. She had no reason to believe a flower or vase delivery was anything other than what it purported to be. She was the victim of a premeditated, lying-in-wait, cross-state assassination attempt. The defense will argue she should not have blocked him without also filing a restraining order, or that she should have answered the DoorDash at the door herself, or some other strained theory of comparative fault. None of these theories will survive a serious evidentiary challenge. California’s pure comparative-fault rule means that even if a jury did assign some small percentage of fault to Jariah (which we do not concede), her recovery is reduced only by that percentage, not eliminated.
Evidence Preservation — What Exists and How Fast It Disappears
Evidence is the lifeblood of a civil case. The platforms and the property have all the electronic and documentary proof we need — but they also have the ability to make that proof disappear on a routine schedule. The evidence preservation letter is the very first document we send, and the clock starts the day you call us.
Airbnb’s records. Airbnb maintains user account data (Williams’ account, Jariah’s account if she had one, the host’s account), reservation records, communication logs, identity verification records (Airbnb’s identity verification involves government-ID matching for both guests and hosts), payment and billing records, internal safety reports and incident flags, and any host-standard compliance records. Airbnb also retains third-party vendor data (background-check provider results) for a defined period. Airbnb’s published data-retention policies are subject to change; in litigation, the preservation duty overrides routine retention. We send the demand letter to Airbnb’s registered agent and to its General Counsel, and we send a parallel preservation letter to the property host (whose identity is in Airbnb’s records) so the host does not independently purge booking and identity records.
Lyft’s records. Lyft’s app telemetry is the single most decisive piece of evidence in this case. The pickup GPS (Williams’ Arizona origin), the route, the drop-off GPS (the location “several houses down” from the Airbnb), the time stamps, the fare records, the driver identity, the driver’s in-app communications, and the driver’s account history are all within Lyft’s possession. Lyft also retains safety incident reports (any prior reports involving Williams as a rider), ride-flag data (any internal flag the system generated for this trip), and identity-verification records. Lyft’s published retention windows are short. The preservation letter freezes all of it.
DoorDash’s records. DoorDash order metadata is the smoking gun for the lure mechanism. DoorDash retains, for each order, the ordering account, the delivery address, the recipient information, the order timing, the courier identity, the courier’s GPS telemetry, any in-app communication between the customer and the courier, and any prior order history at the same address or from the same account. DoorDash also retains internal safety-incident reports and any account-flag history. The fact that two orders were placed at the same address within hours — first flowers, then a vase — is the operational data point that proves the lure mechanism to a jury. We freeze this data immediately.
The criminal case evidence. The San Diego Police Department investigation produced physical evidence (the firearm, the clothing Williams changed into, the canyon where he hid), audio recordings (the alleged confession), eyewitness statements, the 911 call transcript, the crime-scene photographs, the autopsy report, and the booking records. As the family, you have standing to access some of this through the criminal process, but the bulk of it becomes accessible through the civil discovery process once we file suit. We coordinate with the criminal case without ever compromising the family’s position.
The medical records. The medical records for Jariah (the shooting-to-death window, the emergency response) and the complete medical records for the baby (NICU stay, imaging, developmental assessments, all specialists, all therapies) are the foundation of the damages case. These records are subject to California’s medical-records retention requirements — adult medical records must be kept for at least seven years; minor medical records must be kept until the patient reaches age nineteen (or seven years after the last entry, whichever is longer). The hospital system in San Diego will preserve records when served with a litigation hold, but we send preservation demands within days of retention to avoid any chance of records being purged under routine retention schedules.
The TMZ-style preservation hazards. Social media posts (by family, friends, witnesses, or even the shooter before or after the event) can be deleted within minutes. Photos, videos, voicemail greetings, text message threads — all of it lives on devices and platforms with auto-delete settings. We work with families to identify the personal records and to preserve them before they vanish.
The preservation letter is the first document we send. The cost of sending it is zero. The cost of not sending it can be the loss of the entire case.
The First Seventy-Two Hours — What You Do Right Now
If you are reading this within seventy-two hours of Jariah’s death or her daughter’s birth, the next three days matter in a way that no later three days will. Here is what you do, in order:
-
Call us at 1-888-ATTY-911. The call is free, confidential, and twenty-four hours a day. We will assign a senior trial attorney to your family within hours, not days. We speak Spanish. Hablamos Español.
-
Do not give a recorded statement to any insurance adjuster or platform representative. Refer them to us.
-
Do not delete anything. Texts, photos, voicemails, social media posts, browser history, call logs — every record of Jariah’s last days, her voice, her face, her interactions, has value. Preserve it. If you have to back up a phone, back it up. If you have to take screenshots, take them. If you have to print a thread, print it.
-
Identify witnesses. Anyone who saw Jariah in the days before the shooting, anyone who saw Williams before the shooting, anyone who was inside or near the Airbnb, any neighbor in Bay Park, any DoorDash courier who delivered the flowers or the vase, any Lyft driver who had contact with Williams, any family member who witnessed prior abuse. Write down their names and contact information before memory fades.
-
Do not sign anything. No releases, no authorizations, no platform agreements, no insurance documents, no settlement offers. Refer them to us.
-
Get the medical records preserved. For Jariah (the shooting-to-death window), and most importantly for her surviving daughter, send a written preservation demand to the hospital and every treating physician. The medical record is the foundation of the damages case. If the baby’s records are not preserved in their entirety, the case is materially weaker.
-
Do not speak to the press without consulting us first. Anything you say publicly can be used in the civil case. We will coordinate any media strategy with the criminal case strategy.
-
Keep one binder. A single physical binder with the death certificate, the autopsy report, the criminal complaint, the police report, the medical records for the baby, and any family contact list. It is the single source of truth when you need to act fast.
What the Case Is Worth — An Honest Estimate
We will not promise a number. We will not guarantee a verdict. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But we can describe the categories of damages and the ranges California juries have awarded in comparable cases, so you understand what is at stake.
The wrongful-death claim (Jariah’s mother, sister, and any other heirs). Loss of financial support, loss of household services, loss of gifts and benefits, loss of love and companionship, funeral and burial expenses. For a seventeen-year-old decedent, the lifetime financial-support figure is calculated using a worklife expectancy table (the standard forensic-economic tool) and a projection of her likely earnings trajectory. The non-financial losses — the loss of a daughter’s love, guidance, and presence for the rest of a mother’s life — are the largest single category in many California wrongful-death verdicts and are not capped by statute in California (outside the medical-malpractice context).
The survival action (Jariah’s estate). Conscious pain and suffering (if any), punitive damages, and pre-death damages. The punitive damages are tied to the malice finding, and the lying-in-wait facts give us a strong foundation.
The baby’s claim for loss of mother. Loss of parental love, care, companionship, and guidance for the rest of her life. Measured across an entire expected lifespan, this is one of the largest categories of damages in a wrongful-death-via-child case. The baby will never have a mother. She will never hear her mother’s voice except in recordings. She will never know what her mother would have taught her. The damages are not theoretical — they are the practical cost of what the law calls loss of nurture.
The baby’s claim for her own catastrophic injuries. Lifetime medical care (current pediatric figures for severe neonatal HIE commonly project lifetime care costs well into seven figures and, for the most severe cases, low eight figures), future lost earning capacity, future pain and suffering, and disfigurement (the scars of the emergency C-section, the scars of feeding tubes and surgical interventions). A life-care planner builds the cost model; a forensic economist reduces it to present value.
Punitive damages. Against Williams, malice is essentially conceded by the lying-in-wait special-circumstance allegation. Against the commercial defendants, punitive damages depend on what we find in discovery — the internal safety reports, the risk assessments, the known-stalker-or-abuser incidents, the company’s own training and policies. The punitive damages, where they attach, are designed to punish and deter, and they are often the difference between a meaningful recovery and a token one.
Across all categories, the realistic range of recovery in a California wrongful-death-plus-catastrophic-injury case of this severity, tried or settled before a sophisticated San Diego defense team, is measured in the multi-millions for the moderate case and in the tens of millions for the catastrophic case. Jariah’s daughter’s injuries are the catastrophic-injury end of that range. With the lying-in-wait facts and the egregious commercial-defendant conduct in evidence, a verdict or settlement in the high seven figures to the low or middle eight figures is within the realm of California jury capacity. The exact number depends on the medical evidence, the expert testimony, the jury, and the defense strategy. Our job is to put the medical evidence, the expert testimony, and the jury in the strongest possible position.
Insurance Coverage — The Money Behind the Defendants
Commercial defendants in cases like this are covered by layers of insurance, typically:
- A primary commercial general liability (CGL) policy with limits in the millions
- An excess (umbrella) policy above the primary
- A second-layer or third-layer excess policy above that
- Sometimes a separate media-liability or technology-liability policy
The structure and limits are confidential and case-specific. We will demand the policies in discovery and will name the carriers as needed. If any carrier attempts to deny coverage, we will file a declaratory-judgment action to enforce it. California Insurance Code § 11580 imposes specific duties on liability insurers, including the duty to defend, and California courts interpret coverage broadly in favor of the insured. We will use every tool the law gives us to ensure the insurance is available to pay the judgment.
Airbnb’s AirCover program, Lyft’s contingent insurance, and DoorDash’s commercial insurance each present specific coverage questions that depend on the company’s specific program structure, the timing of the underlying conduct, and the specific language of the policies. We will analyze each.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can we sue Airbnb for what happened to Jariah?
Yes. Airbnb is a commercial host that holds itself out as providing safe accommodations. California law imposes a duty on commercial premises possessors to take reasonable steps to protect invitees from foreseeable criminal harm. A seventeen-year-old victim of intimate-partner violence who has blocked her abuser and fled with her family is an identifiable person at an identifiable risk; reasonable security measures to address that risk are within the standard of care. Airbnb’s own AirCover and host-standards materials document the company’s claimed commitment to guest safety, which sets the standard we will argue it must meet. Airbnb will defend on the ground that it is only an online marketplace and that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shields it; we will respond with the established limits of Section 230 (it does not protect platform conduct, only third-party content) and with the specific platform-design and verification failures that contributed to Jariah’s death.
Can we sue Lyft for bringing Williams across state lines?
Yes. Lyft is liable under California law for negligent entrustment and negligent screening when its conduct in transporting a rider falls below the standard of care and contributes to foreseeable harm. Lyft’s app telemetry — pickup GPS, route, drop-off GPS, time stamps, driver identity — is the decisive evidence for what the system knew and when. The fact that Williams was dropped “several houses down” from the Airbnb is itself evidence the driver observed conduct consistent with trying to avoid being seen, which raises questions about what was reported or should have been reported.
Can we sue DoorDash for being the lure?
Yes. DoorDash was the instrument Williams used to lure Jariah outside alone. DoorDash’s no-contact delivery model, designed to protect customer safety and privacy, is precisely what made the platform exploitable as a lure mechanism. The two-order pattern (flowers first, then a vase, at the same address, within hours, after the first attempt failed) is the operational smoking gun for foreseeability. Discovery will pull DoorDash’s order metadata, account linkages, and internal safety records.
What is the deadline to file the wrongful-death lawsuit in California?
Two years from the date of death under California Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1. The same two-year period typically applies to the survival action. The baby’s own personal-injury claim may benefit from the discovery rule because the full extent of hypoxic-ischemic brain injury in a neonate often does not manifest until months or years after birth. The clock is running. Do not wait. Call 1-888-ATTY-911 now.
Who can file the wrongful-death claim under California law?
Under California Code of Civil Procedure § 377.60, the heirs of the decedent — defined by California’s intestate succession rules (Probate Code § 6402) — have standing. For an unmarried seventeen-year-old decedent whose child is alive, the primary claimants are her mother and sister (and any other heirs as intestacy identifies them). The personal representative of the estate (appointed by the probate court if there is no will) brings the survival action. The baby’s own claims are brought by her guardian ad litem.
Can the surviving baby bring her own claim against the defendants?
Yes. The baby has at least three distinct civil claims of her own: (1) loss of mother (parental consortium and nurture), brought by her guardian ad litem; (2) her own personal-injury claim for the catastrophic hypoxic-ischemic brain injury she suffered as a consequence of the shooting of her mother, including lifetime medical care, future lost earning capacity, and pain and suffering; and (3) any pre-death injury claim for the premature birth and emergency C-section. Each claim is separate from the wrongful-death and survival claims and is brought in her name through her guardian ad litem.
What is “lying in wait” and why does it matter to our civil case?
Lying in wait is a California first-degree-murder special circumstance under California Penal Code § 190.2(a)(15). It applies when a murder is committed by waiting for an opportune moment to act, with premeditation and concealment. The criminal case will prove this. In the civil case, the same facts establish malice under California Civil Code § 3294, which permits punitive damages against any defendant whose conduct meets the malice standard. The lying-in-wait facts here — the cross-state travel, the two-stage lure mechanism, the alleged confession — are exactly the conduct that supports punitive damages.
How much is this case worth?
We will not promise a number. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But the categories of damages are broad and the magnitude is large: wrongful-death economic and non-economic losses (no California cap outside medical malpractice); survival action damages including punitive damages; the baby’s loss-of-mother claim; the baby’s catastrophic personal-injury claim (lifetime care costs commonly exceed millions and, for severe neonatal HIE, can exceed the seven-figure range and reach into eight figures when combined with lifetime earning capacity); and punitive damages against defendants who consciously disregarded known risks. The realistic range of recovery in a case of this severity is the multi-millions to the tens of millions. The exact number depends on the medical evidence, the jury, and the defense strategy.
Will the criminal case hurt our civil case?
No. The criminal case and the civil case are separate tracks. The criminal conviction (if it comes) will help the civil case — a jury hearing that Williams was convicted of murder with a lying-in-wait special circumstance will be powerful evidence of malice. The criminal discovery is partly available to the civil case. The two cases are coordinated, not competing. Waiting for the criminal case to resolve is not a strategy — it is a forfeiture of rights because the two-year statute of limitations is running now.
What if Jariah’s family cannot afford an attorney?
You cannot afford not to have one. Our firm handles catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases on a contingency basis. There is no fee unless we win. The free consultation is exactly that — free. The case costs (filing fees, expert witnesses, depositions, medical records) are advanced by the firm and recovered out of any recovery. If there is no recovery, you owe us nothing for costs or fees. We are at our contact page and at 1-888-ATTY-911 twenty-four hours a day.
Do we have to go to court, or can this settle?
Many catastrophic cases settle. The strongest civil cases often settle — sometimes for substantial sums — because defendants know what the jury will do. But a case settles only when the defense believes you will try it. We prepare every case as if it will go to a San Diego County jury. The better we prepare, the better the settlement. Our job is to put the defense in a position where settling for the right number is the rational choice. If they will not settle for the right number, we try the case.
Why does the father of the baby have any claim?
He does not. Trevon Williams is the shooter. He is the primary tortfeasor. He is the defendant, not a claimant, in this case. He may have a criminal-defense attorney appointed for the criminal case; that has nothing to do with the civil case. His parental status gives him no claim against any party in this civil case — quite the opposite, his parental status is the foundation for the malice and punitive-damage allegations against him.
What happens to the baby?
The baby is alive. She is in medical care. Her future depends on the medical care she receives now and over the rest of her life. The civil case is designed to fund that future — through a structured settlement or jury verdict that pays for her lifetime care, her therapies, her education, her housing, her dignity. The legal instrument that makes that future possible is the civil case. We are at the center of building it.
What about the criminal trial — can we attend?
Family members of the victim have rights in the criminal case, including the right to attend trial and, in many cases, the right to be heard at sentencing. We will coordinate with you and with the District Attorney’s victim-witness office. We do not represent you in the criminal case; the DA’s office does. Our role in the criminal case is to keep you informed and to protect your civil case from any inadvertent compromise.
How do we start?
Call 1-888-ATTY-911 (1-888-288-9911). Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. A live person answers. The consultation is free. There is no fee unless we win. We speak Spanish — Hablamos Español. Or reach us at our contact page. When you call, have ready: Jariah’s full legal name and date of birth, the date and location of the shooting, the criminal case number if known, the name of the Airbnb host if known, and any other identifying information. If you do not have all of that, call anyway. We will help you figure out what we need.
The next seventy-two hours matter. The two-year clock is running. The evidence is on a timer. The insurance company is already building its case. We are ready to build yours.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC
Legal Emergency Lawyers
1-888-ATTY-911 (1-888-288-9911)
Free consultation. No fee unless we win. Hablamos Español.
attorney911.com | Contact